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2018 Elementary and High School Essay Competition was successfully completed on July 7th.

Winning essays--integrating life experience with new service concepts

The 2018 Elementary and High School Essay Competition organized by the Saylin Wen Cultural and Educational Foundation is in its 14th year. The award ceremony was held on July 7th at the National Central Library. Lin Ya-li, Executive Director of our Foundation; Ovid Tzeng, Academician of the Academia Sinica; Lin Teng-Chiao, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Education and other honored guests presented the Special Excellence and Excellent Awards to students. In addition, representatives from the judges’ panel also gave remarkable comments on the winning entries.

Participants of the Elementary and High School Essay Competition were divided into four groups: middle elementary school students, upper elementary school students, junior high school students, and high school and vocational school students. After more than three months of intense competition, 6,749 entries made it to the semi-final from which 2,952 students qualified for the final after rigorous selection. Then on June 3, the on-site writing competition was held in 11 districts all over Taiwan, where 343 students were expected to emerge as winners of the Special Excellence Award, Excellent Award, First Prize, Honorable Mention and Judges' List Award.

For group awards for outstanding schools in the elementary school category were New Taipei City Banqiao Elementary School, which won the championship; Chiayi County Gangpin Elementary and Taitung County National Taitung University Affiliated Elementary School, runners-up; were Taipei Municipal Tsai Hsing Elementary School, New Taipei City Chi-Jen Primary School, and Kinmen Kaishuan Elementary School, Excellent Award winners. In the junior high school category, were Taitung County Hsin Sheng Junior High School, champion; Taoyuan City Shin Sheng High School Affiliated Junior High School, runner-up; and Taipei Municipal Chingshin Junior High School, second runner-up. In the senior high and vocational school category, the winners were Taipei Municipal First Girls High School, champion; Erh Shing Senior High School, runner-up; and Changhua County Changhua Girls' Senior High School, second runner-up.

The Foundation has long cultivated cultural education for elementary and high school students, and promoted classic literature to help students learn, think and express themselves. With education as the basis, and through innovative methods and the spirit of caring, the Foundation has strived to cultivate quality talents. New service talents must possess the advantages and characteristics of FIT+HUG. Specifically, FIT embodies the three major qualities of friendly by nature, innovative with diversity, and technology-aware while HUG represents the three major functions of human-centric approach, uniting multiple domains and global view with local act. Therefore, in the final this year, the themes were: Service Begins With Us for the middle elementary school group; A Happy Cooperative Experience for the upper elementary school group; Value of an Ordinary Person for the junior high school group; and Brilliant Creativity for the senior high school group. The students were expected to think about how to implement service and relevant learning in daily life, and share what they learned through service to promote the idea of service and instill in them a people oriented and thoughtful service attitude.

The winning students for this year were Li Meng-Chun from Taipei Municipal First Girls High School and Yu Tzu-Yu from Taoyuan Municipal Wu-Ling Senior High School. Both were Special Excellence Award winners in the 2017 senior high school group, and this year, both were once again nominated for the Special Excellence Award. The judges thought that Li Meng-Chun's High-rise Building showed artistic professionalism, with its depth of thinking and maturity of text mastery while the poetic articulation was very appealing and persuasive. For Yu Tzu-Yu, the implied meaning in his words mot only showed the endless drive and desires of the human body, but also linked learning to the fun of things and food. Without profound reflection and in-depth observation, it would have been impossible for him to radiate such detachment yet quest to regain lost conscience, and achieve that high quality to thoroughly win the recognition of the judges. Chen Yu-Tung from Kinmen County Jin-Sha Junior High School won the 2017 Excellence Award in the junior high school group, and this year, he had the honor of winning the Special Excellence Award. The judges commented that his dialogue was fluent and smooth, and his use of words were genuine and on target. Using the transformation of an ordinary love into extraordinary deed, he spoke of changing personal awareness toward the meaning of life, which further determined the purpose of hard work in life.

The 2018 Elementary and High School Essay Competition came to a successful conclusion. For the full list of winners, please refer to our official website.

 

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